Hopes for the Future

Over the course of the year “Painting Smiles” has taught me to do what makes me happy, and when shared with others my happiness could be passed on.

Panel Searching

Finding the location for the mural to be painted was probably the most tedious part of the project. It was difficult and we weren’t able to get to the main purpose of the project: to make children happy.

In our panel we have had a few people in mind. We would like to invite Mr. Bicente Deleon, Janet Peden, Sarah Callahan Baker, David LaVassaur, and Emanuel Martinez.

· Mr. Bicente Deleon has been the one who has taught us almost all the things we know about painting murals. He was there with us throughout the whole process of painting the whole gym. He could help us by giving us guide lines and tips upon improving with our mural.

· Ms. Janet Peden is the one who has been gracious enough to help us out with finding the location. We hope that she can help us with giving us tips and ideas of how the mural should look.

· Ms. Sarah Callahan Baker has been very supportive of the project. She has children of her own and she could help us with giving us ideas of what children would like.

· David LaVassaur is the director of the Boy’s and Girl’s Center which we will be painting. He could help us by giving us suggestions of what he believes that the students, parents, and staff would most.

· Emanuel Martinez is a professional muralist. We hope to get tips from him and use them in our own mural.

We are very excited for our painting of the mural. We hope that we get positive answers from our panel invitations.

But so far our individual research has been going well. The most difficult part is going to be to decide what to paint. It is difficult because we still need to find out what the children want painted. One of the major challenges that we are going to need to face is the texture of the wall. We have heard that the wall has a rough finish so making a very detailed mural will not work out.

Research that we need is not only what we are going to paint but what we want to teach the children. We have been offered the great opportunity to be able to teach a class while we are at the Boy’s and Girl’s Center. We need to research what we want the children to learn and what we want them to get out of the experience. During the break we will need to do more research and reading in how the art that we teach the children could influence and inspire them.

Mission Accomplished!

The mission has been accomplished! We have found a location to where we are going to paint the mural and we have found someone to sponsor us.

A family friend helped us with finding the location. She knows of a Girls and Boys Club that was just built in Bay-city, Texas. The club has been very excited about our project and can't wait to work with us. They already have a wall where they want us to paint the mural. Brenda and I will soon go to Bay-city to talk to the director of the club and see what we want in the mural.

The best part is that we have gotten a sponsor to pay for all of our supplies. Business company, Bowen, Miclette, & Britt (http://www.bmbinc.com/) has been very generous to us by offering to pay for everything.

We are very excited to have a place to paint and we can't wait to get started. Thank you so much to all of those who have been helping us find

Contacts Contacts Contacts!

Things have been going a lot better!
Knowing what we are actually going to paint will not be decided until we know where we are going to paint, and what the children want to see in this mural that will be theirs.
Finding the location, the most difficult part, is progressing! I have still been in contact with the Make a Wish Foundation from the gulf (http://texgulf.wish.org/) and they have been very kind in giving us suggestions on where we could paint. They directed me to contacting Texas Children's Hospital (http://www.texaschildrens.org/) and to MD Anderson (http://www.mdanderson.org/).
Even though MD Anderson sadly had to reject our project because we weren't allowed to paint in their hospitals, Texas Children's Hospital sounds very excited! They have contacted me already the same day that I called them. They seem to be very excited in hearing more about our project and hopefully we can get something started!

One Step Closer

I have talked to the Make a Wish Foundation (http://www.wish.org) and they have been very interested in helping us on our project. They have given us a few ideas of ways that we could help them out. Ways that we could help out is by remodeling children's rooms. We could paint a mural in children's individual rooms in their homes. For example there is a little girl from Channelview, Texas who wants a Paris themed room, and a little boy who wants a soccer themed room. We hope that we can find a project where we can paint the mural and at the same time make children smile.

Make A Wish, May make our Wish

Brenda has been doing an awesome job in researching the different colors and the emotions that each color gives. Finding the colors that gives positive energy will be a very important factor in our mural.
I have contacted the "Make A Wish Foundation" and left a message. They have been kind enough to call back and are excited to hear more about the project! We hope to talk to them very soon again to see with what they are able to contribute to the project.

Learning with Art

I found this Ted talk very interesting because he is trying to help children by tutoring them one on one, and in front of his center there is a huge mural. For our project we want to also help children but with our art. Our art may not be showing how to do a math problem, but expressing our words through a paintbrush.

So Far, So... Okay

Finding a location for the mural to be painted has still been a struggle. There are a lot of places and the issue of the chemicals in the paint with the children always comes up.

The good news is that we have talked to Mr. Deleon, the school maintenance man, who is more than happy to help us paint the mural and give us feedback on our work. This will be very interesting because he is probably one of our toughest judges!

Proposal

Culminating Senior Project Proposal

I would simply like to make people happy. Yes, very broad idea but mainly make children happy. I would like to work with Brenda to make a mural in a children's center to help children forget about their problem for at least one second. We are working together because we have both seen that working together during our mural painting of our gym we have found a passion of painting. I would specifically like to help out children with cancer, or any sort of special needs.

One of our options is painting a children's center such as CPS (Contact: my sister works at a psychology office so she talks to them fairly frequently and could give us numbers to different locations), Make A Wish Foundation (Contact: look for different locations and talk to them personally), or even Texas Children's Hospital (Contact: we would try to personally contact the President and Chief Executive Officer, Marc A. Wallace).

With painting a mural there are some issues. The first issue is if the locations will allow us to paint a mural. The second issue is time. We will need to know what days we will be going to the location and by when we want to finish it. The third issue is the conservation of the mural. The fourth issue has to do with the paint. For example if we paint inside of a hospital, some of the paint could be toxic and could harm the children.

Our idea for the mural really depends on where and for who the mural will be done. According to parents.com, children feel happy when their voice is heard and they are able to express themselves. So for the mural I would like to meet the children and want to know what they want to express and even have them help out. Once we know what we and the children want the mural to look like we will begin to paint smiles!